The Lighthouse Group
My days with the children who deserve a better chance
Monday, July 18, 2006
I'm here to work for a few days with the Lighthouse Trust.
This is part of a programme I have set up to get 20 MPs out of Westminster and involved in a community-based group. I want more MPs to see for themselves the shattering effect of social breakdown in our cities and towns.
The Lighthouse offers remedial education for children who have fallen through the gaps in the education system. These are often children with serious behavioural problems.
I was thrown in at the deep end. After a briefing and discussion by Tim, Joe and Jayne, I help with a group of five boys and girls. They've been waiting for me. I am made to face a barrage of questions on everything from whether I think my wife is "fit" to why I don't have bodyguards. One girl is in care. She tells me she is 15 but hasn't attended any school for years. She's known little love until she came to Lighthouse. Broken homes, drugs, alcohol and these kids haven't even reached adulthood yet.
That night I stay with a very kind couple nearby. Greg works for Lighthouse. His wife makes wedding dresses from home and home schools three young children.
Tuesday
Horror of horrors, I awake to find out that my host and his wife slept in their caravan outside. They had given up their bed for me. I am embarrassed and apologise but they shrug it off with big smiles.
Back to Lighthouse. I get a tour of their social housing work at the back of the project. Up to 10 young people, mostly just out of care, have their first taste of freedom: a room with a lock on the door. Referrals from Probation or Social Services, some have been tagged in the past.
As we walk around I am fascinated to see that a nearby house opposite has been disfigured with paint. "Why?" I ask. "There's a gang of young Asians operating here," I am told. "We have had problems before, yet when a Muslim community leader, living in the house spoke out against the gangs, they drove a truck through his front window. Later after he had gone, they returned and covered his house in paint. He hasn't returned yet."
As I wait to move on to the next assignment, Beth, a girl from the class the day before, sees me and proudly points out some poetry she had published. It is beautifully constructed and describes her problem life in and out of care. As she leaves, her group leader Sam comes over, he tells me the girl is successfully dealing with her problems, her pride is palpable.
I am sent back to one of the remedial education groups to go through the same process as yesterday. This group is a little more challenging. Less structure, much more outspoken, loud. However they surprise me and listen in silence to an ex-drug addict as he talks about his wasted life on drugs. It is powerful stuff and clearly works. An ex-boxer – talented, with a bright future – he threw it away as he sank into a living nightmare of addiction and abuse. The children can tell this is for real. Riveted, they burst into applause when he finishes. I am particularly struck by one 15-year-old boy who has addiction problems. He engages the man in conversation afterwards. It's as though he could for the first time see that others have drug problems and conquer them. Very moving. This should be happening in every school up and down the land. Personal testimony is clearly the best form of drugs education.
Tonight I am staying with a couple who both work for Lighthouse. Oh yes, it's a spare bed tonight, I've checked, no caravan!
Wednesday
Lighthouse have converted an old greasy spoon café at the front of their premises on the main road into a modern coffee shop. They then cheekily applied to use the Costa Coffee brand name and this now is a Costa Coffee shop. Here I am meeting their supported housing team. I listen as they round up their case load. They suspect one of bringing drugs in to the building. The case worker is worried about the effect on others, when someone asks about their liability in the eyes of the police. Their team leader Cath says she will check, she looks worried. Discussion moves to the deteriorating behaviour of another, loud music, late night parties are testing the limit of their tolerance. One girl was seen with a bruised face – her boyfriend is abusive. The girl exhibits the depressing symptoms of abuse, denial and a determination to hold on to her aggressor. I suggest a call to the Refuge charity.
Thursday
I join Louise's group who are beyond school age. They are young but are too old to join the education programme with the others. They fit the same pattern as the younger counterparts: Behaviour issues, drugs, care homes and an absence of any formal education. There is real humour in this group and as the banter grows I find I am really enjoying myself. I learn about moshers, goths and twocs, (people who steal… "Taken Without Consent"). Paul, James and Ricky accuse Michelle of being a chav and listening to ice cream van music. Her smile is infectious as she rebuts their comments and everyone is soon laughing. I find myself thinking of my own children and how similar this is to our kitchen table banter at home, before I realise how far some of them have travelled from their dysfunctional past.
Later I watch a ceremony for teenagers who have agreed to abstain from sex for a time. The programme helps to resist peer group pressures to have sex. A leader of the programme told the story of a girl aged just 14 who had been put under immense pressure to have sex by her best friend. She was constantly taunted with the idea that all her friends had had sex. In the end, she relented. She got drunk and slept with a boy. Later she had to be taken to the clinic as there were complications. It was there that her friend confessed that none of her friends had had sex. It had all been a dare.
As I drive away from Bradford I feel my four days show how broken homes, drugs and failed education have become the norm for too many. Yet there is hope. Lighthouse and other community groups around the country really do offer them a second chance, but there are too few of them.
As I turn my car towards Westminster I wonder if the metropolitan elite who inhabit my world have the courage to leave their comfort zone and see that without such help, for too many children, life has almost ended before it has begun.
Table talk: Iain Duncan Smith at the Lighthouse Trust in Bradford. Picture: Gary Longbottom
Republished with kind permission of the Yorkshire Post
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